Howard Pyle at the Chadds Ford Gallery       
Howard Pyle (March 5, 1853 – November 9, 1911), a native of Wilmington, Delaware, is one of American's best known illustrators and writers.

In 1894 he began teaching illustration at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (now Drexel University). After 1900 he founded his own school called the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art and taught in an old mill here in Chadds Ford. This was the foundation of the Artists Colony and Brandywine School. Some of his more famous students were N. C. Wyeth, Olive Rush, Frank Schoonover, Elenore Abbott, Thornton Oakley, Violet Oakley, Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle, Allen Tupper True, Anna Whelan Betts, Ethel Franklin Betts, Harvey Dunn and Jessie Willcox Smith.

His books, which he wrote an illustrated, include The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, the four-volume set on King Arthur and other books, frequently with medieval European settings.

Pyle traveled to Florence, Italy to study the mural painting there in 1910, and died there in 1911 of sudden kidney infection (Bright's Disease).

Howard Pyle